Colourblind
by Someone aka Me
Summary: "She says the colours will come when he is finally touching the person he is destined to fall in love with. She says that everything will change in the matter of a single moment." He is fourteen when the world goes sideways. ::: CharlieDraco, colorblind/soul mates of a sort AU.


For Liza, for the Gift Giving Extravaganza 2014 — September.

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When he is eleven, they test him. First a spell, then numbers and letters on little cards that he's supposed to identify. Sometimes, he makes the answers up. He doesn't like to admit that he doesn't know.

When the woman is finished, she packs up her little cards and talks to his mother. She shakes her head, first, and his mum frowns. "Colourblind," the woman says.

His mother's eyebrows scrunch up in angry lines.

"But he's already met the other children of good families."

The woman lowers her gaze. "I am sorry, Narcissa. But the test never lies."

His mother cries. Draco doesn't understand what it all means.

.

He learns, later. His mother finally explains. She says that when other people say red and green and turquoise and aquamarine, they don't see what he sees. She says it's hard to explain, but he'll know when he finally sees colours. She uses words like "vivid" and "vibrant" and he still doesn't understand. He sees the shade of his mother's hair and the patterns of her dress. He sees the difference between the pale petals of a flower and the dark center. He doesn't know what she means when she says this is not colour; it is only shades of grey.

She says the colours will come when he is finally touching the person he is destined to fall in love with. She says that everything will change in the matter of a single moment.

"Did you see the colours when you met father, then?"

She smiles. "I did, the first time I met him. My mother saw it happen, and she made sure that my father allowed us to be married. After all, your father was originally intended to marry my… to marry someone else."

But then her smile slips. She pulls Draco onto her lap, and he squirms, too big to be held like this. Narcissa doesn't let go.

"Draco, you must understand. You haven't seen the colours, and you've shaken hands with all of your appropriate age-mates."

Draco frowns. "What do you mean?"

"I… Draco, you understand how important it is to keep the blood pure."

Nodding fiercely, Draco says, "No mixing the blood!"

"That's right darling. But… but it seems like your colour-mate is not one of us, is not a pureblood."

Draco scrunches up his face. "That's horrible."

A smile crosses her lips, but her eyes don't move. "I know, darling. And I'm sorry for you. It is… possible, that your colour mate is from far away, and you just haven't met her yet. But it is more likely that she is not of pure blood."

Draco frowns, silent.

"You know what that means, don't you, darling?" his mother asks.

Draco nods. "It means I can't marry her."

His mother nods.

Draco resists the urge to shrug, knowing mother would think it improper. "I don't mind. Who needs love, anyway? Love is for girls." And he hops off her lap and marches out. He doesn't see his mother's eyes follow him sadly.

.

People talk about it, sometimes. About finding their colour mate. Pansy asks him several times if he sees them. He rolls his eyes each time.

"I've told you I don't."

She tries to kiss him once, saying she hasn't met hers and he hasn't met his so why not? She tastes of too much lipstick. The whole thing is repulsive.

Draco doesn't even realise his colour-mate could be a boy, until he sees what happens when Blaise goes home with Theo over Christmas Hols second year. Theo comes back black and blue; Blaise comes back alone. Blaise gives dark looks to anyone who tries to ask, but Theo swears him to secrecy and then confides, because sometimes Theo trusts too easily.

Theo says that he and Blaise met when they were little. All the purebloods do, Draco knows, because then they know from the start. And Blaise and Theo reacted, sparks, wonder. They'd been tested: a positive. And their parents had separated them, refused to let them meet again.

They'd forgotten, Theo says. They were two, maybe three, he doesn't know. Old enough to react, but not old enough to remember.

But when his parents saw Blaise, they were furious. Kicked Blaise out into the snow, screamed at Theo that they wouldn't have _'that sort of unnaturalness' _in their house.

He hadn't even understood what they meant until his older sister explained, two weeks in. She looked at him with pity.

"Blaise's mother doesn't believe in love," Theo says. "And my parents don't want me to love him. And I don't. But I think I could. And I want to be allowed to. Is that wrong?"

Draco doesn't know what to say.

.

Draco is fourteen when the world goes… sideways.

It's the Triwizard Tournament. There are people everywhere, milling every which way. Draco, slim as he has always been, slips easily through the crowds, attempting to make his way to the stands for the first task. He hopes it's dangerous. He's looking forward to seeing Potter fight for his life.

He isn't really looking where he's going. People are crushing in on all sides.

Someone bumps into him, and Draco trips as his vision explodes. He curls over, clutching his head. Staring at the brown dirt path, he blinks over and over, waiting to see if it's all going to disappear. It doesn't.

He straightens up slowly, still blinking too much. He looks around, but no one looks to be in a similar state.

Draco stands stock still as the crowd travels around him, no one aware of the way his life has just changed.

.

He doesn't understand. He can't comprehend it. How can someone have found their colour-mate and then just walked away? Without so much as a hello?

Is he so entirely repulsive that someone would run away when finding out he was their match?

He flops onto his bed with a sigh. Theo, sitting on his bed nearby, gives him a look.

"Is that an I-want-to-rant sigh, or a leave-me-the-hell-alone sigh?"

Draco's lips twitch. He likes Theo, despite himself. And Theo likes him, because Theo hasn't forgotten that Draco has never told anyone what really happened in second year.

He actually debates telling Theo, for a moment. Just a moment.

But Draco was raised differently than Theo. Draco was raised to never show vulnerability. And this? He is feeling weak, right now. He can't show that.

Eventually, he shakes his head. Theo shrugs and turns back to his reading.

After a moment, Draco throws his fist into his pillow. He feels like screaming in frustration, but instead he just says, "Colours are stupid."

Theo looks up, eyeing him curiously. And the curtains around his bed are emerald and the stones of the floor are blue-tinged grey soot and his hair is platinum with just a hint of yellow and it's like nothing is what he knew.

"They're beautiful, though," Theo finally says. He glances over at the empty bed where Blaise usually sleeps. The small smile on his face is fond. Draco wonders when those two are finally going to admit that they're both head over heels for each other.

But Theo's words linger. Draco had been so fixated on the _who_ that he hadn't really thought about the colours themselves. The world is brighter now, but Draco isn't sure he would call it better. It's different. It's more complex, more nuanced.

He'll get used to it, he supposes.

.

The matter of his colour-mate falls by the wayside. Things happen. The Dark Lord returns. His father goes to prison, and it tears his mother apart.

He is asked to kill Dumbledore.

By this point, Draco isn't sure what he believes in. He knows Theo is the closest thing he's got to a best friend, and Theo and Blaise are oh-so-careful not to let anyone know they even _talk_ because the Dark Lord doesn't approve of _'their kind.'_ He knows his father is in Azkaban, and that his master leaves him there because Lucius failed him. He knows that asking Draco to kill his headmaster is a way of making a point — no one fails the Dark Lord without consequence.

He knows there is a sociopath in his house in place of his father and his mother doesn't leave her room anymore unless she must and he has never felt so helpless.

He makes the decisions that he thinks will keep him and his mother alive the longest. He lets the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, but he can't kill the Headmaster, not even when Dumbledore is trapped and wandless and alone. He listens to the Carrows because he has to, but Draco knows his Cruciatus is weak because his heart isn't in it. Blaise and Theo haven't come back to Hogwarts this year.

He goes home for Easter and finds his mother looking stronger. His father is back, but he is not the man who left. Still, his mother holds her shoulders up in a way she hasn't since he left.

And somehow that translates to Draco lying to his aunt about Potter. And Granger. And Weasley. And it all spirals so far out of his control, Draco mutely obeying the commands of all of his relatives until his face is sliced open by shards of chandelier and Potter and company are all gone. Now Draco really isn't sure what he believes in.

.

In May, it all comes to a head. And then Crabbe is dead and Potter is dead then Potter is alive again and no one's really sure what's happening but Draco decides the wisest course is to just stay out of it.

Until he sees Dolohov advancing toward Luna Lovegood and, despite himself, Draco has grown fond of the eccentric girl and her stupid bravery.

He doesn't really let himself think about it. He sends a stunner with his borrowed wand, watching as Dolohov drops.

And it's as good as a declaration, and suddenly Draco can't stay out of the fighting anymore.

Then it's over.

It's over.

It takes a moment to register, but the Dark Lord is dead.

Draco takes a deep breath and it feels like air fits properly in his lungs again.

The first thing he does is fire a Patronus off. It darts into the distance, heading for Theo, wherever he may be.

The next thing he does is slump onto a bench. He gets dirty looks, but he gets looks of praise, too, from those who have seen him fighting. Mostly, though, everyone looks tired.

Someone takes issue, apparently. "What right do you have to sit with the dead?"

Draco takes a deep breath, intending to move. It isn't worth the fight, not right now.

"Every right," a voice says.

Draco turns toward it. A Weasley stands there. Short, several inches shorter than Draco, but built entirely from muscle. Scars litter his arms, visible only because he wears, not robes, but a muggle-style T-shirt, trousers, and dragon-hide boots.

The stranger takes one look at him and backs off, clearly deciding it isn't worth it.

"Weasley," Draco murmurs. The Weasley sits beside him.

"Charlie, actually."

Draco looks at him. Charlie's smile is broad, and surprisingly genuine for the fact that his brother has just died. There is a sadness in his eyes, but the smile is genuine.

"Well. Thank you, I suppose, Charlie."

Charlie shakes his head. "Thank you," he says. "I saw what you did. I saw who you chose to fight for."

Draco raises an eyebrow. "You were watching me?"

"Mm, might've been." Charlie smirks. The smirk suits him — more than the sadness in his eyes does.

"Why?" Draco can't help the slight insolence in his tone.

Charlie shrugs. "I've been watching you for a long time," he confesses.

That's not exactly what Draco wants to hear.

"And why have you been watching me?"

"I think you'll find the easier question is to ask how long. Since the first Triwizard Tournament event."

Draco's head snaps up, staring straight at Charlie.

"You…?"

"Three years ago, I bumped into a little blonde in the crowds of the Tournament. And the world went bright with colour."

"And then you walked away."

Charlie grimaces, but he can't deny it.

"Why?" Draco can't help but ask.

"You were young. A kid, comparatively. And you were… I didn't know… I didn't know how you would react. I know the whole thing about purebloods and ignoring their colour-mates if it's not someone you approve of. And I didn't know who you were, or who you wanted to be. And I didn't feel like I could… I don't know."

"So you took the choice away from me."

"And what would you have chosen?"

Draco shakes his head. "I'm not sure. But I'd've liked the choice, all the same."

Charlie tips his head. "Maybe I was wrong. I can acknowledge that."

Draco blinks. That wasn't what he'd expected.

"Would you like to go for dinner, sometime?" Charlie asks.

Helplessly, Draco simply nods.

.

The war has changed his mother.

She is still so beautiful but… wilted. His father is in Azkaban and she misses him, but that's not all it is.

He tells her his colour-mate is a man. He tells her that he is a blood traitor.

She looks at him and says, quite clearly, "Draco, I want you to believe in love. We believed in blood, and this is where it got us."

.

Charlie is… not what he was expecting. He is garrulous and crazy-optimistic and cheerful and stupidly brave. He's such a _Gryffindor_, but he's more than that. He's passionate. And he talks too loudly and he can't whisper and he doesn't even know the meaning of the word dignity but… But he doesn't care about Draco's past. He forgives it all without even having heard it all, and then when he hears it he forgives it all over again. He is everything Draco never expected to fall for, but… he does.

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Theo, when he finds out, laughs so hard he actually falls on the floor. Blaise just looks at Theo wryly.

Eventually, Theo composes himself enough to ask if the colours are still stupid.

And, for the second time, Theo's question makes him stop and think about it.

Because the world is brighter, now. He can see the shades of red that make up Charlie's hair. He can see those blue eyes. He can see the tint of every freckle.

And maybe, just maybe, he finally understands what everyone is always talking about.

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Draco is not a romantic. He does not believe in fate, or in soul mates. He does not believe that he has fallen for Charlie because Charlie lights his world with colour.

He falls for Charlie because Charlie is Charlie. Nothing more, and nothing less.


End file.
